Sleeping Dogs
by iwright
Summary: Twenty years after the War, the rumours of one man's death prove to be greatly exaggerated. Does it matter?


It was just the two of them at breakfast, and it almost didn't feel like work at all.

Polyjuiced into a thin blonde man with a bad mustache, Ron sipped his orange juice. The food was good but they had chosen the cafe with outdoor tables for its view - Set on a raised walkway above the road, with a view towards the last shop on the row. From his seat he could see clear down Hallstile Bank, to keep an eye on that shop they'd come to watch. Harry, wearing the shape of a stocky black man with thick grey hair, sat to Ron's right. This put his back to the café's window, but it let him watch Ron's back and the street at the same time. In return Ron kept track of what was going on in the cafe for Harry.

Just the two of them again, old mates watching each others back, surveilling a possible Death Eater in hiding. Almost like old times, really.  
Harry checked the time again, shooting his wrist out of his sleeve to read the mechanical watch. Watching Harry's body language through the form he wore, Ron could see Harry pushing himself into impatience. An old and dangerous habit, but this case was bringing up a lot of the past.

'The shop opens in ten minutes,' Harry said. 'He should be here by now.'

Ron shrugged. 'It's Sunday. Probably not a lot of business first thing in the morning. And it's a little shop, shouldn't take more than two or three minutes to unlock the door and open the till.' He sipped his tea with one hand while using the other to sop up a bit of yolk with the last of his toast. 'And it's not always him who opens. What are you going to do if it's his wife this morning? Run in and tell her to call him?'

Harry exhaled and grabbed his own cup of tea while Ron finished eating. 'All right,' said Harry. 'What are we going to do if it's not him? At all, I mean.'

Ron opened his mouth to reply, then closed it quickly. Three people had just turned the corner of Hallgate, a middle-aged couple with a young girl between them. The woman looked just like her pictures, tall and thin and dark, and like a number of very tall women she had a curve to her spine that put one shoulder slightly higher than the other. The girl was tall for her age and clearly favoured her mother, but you could see the father in the shape of her nose and her lean sharp face.

'No worries about that,' said Ron. 'It's him.'

The mother was a Muggle. The Hogwarts Quill had registered the daughter's birth a decade ago. The husband was a former Death Eater, gone so far gone underground everyone had believed him dead for nearly twenty years.

* * *

'Hexham? Up in Northumberland?' Ron frowned at the trainee. 'What's in Hexham that I know where it is?'

'Yaxley,' the trainee responded. Siobhan McKenna was a ridiculously pretty little Irish lass with a button nose and green eyes, and she could fire off a chain of Cutting Curses faster than most wizards could draw their wands. Right now she was working as Ron's assistant in the Aurors Office to get a taste of the administrative side of things. She'd proven to have a good combination of attention to detail and discretion, and Ron had given her a higher security clearance than most Aurors of her age and experience.

'Right, right. Been a while since I heard that name. What's that old monster up to?'

'He goes by the name of James Gouke. Runs a bookshop.' McKenna took a seat in the old office chair across the desk from Ron, but she didn't hand him the file in her hand. Judging by her little smirk, Ron figured it had to be something good.

'Huh.' Ron chewed on that bit of news. It had been what, eighteen years more or less? 'I sat in on his interrogations. Part of my training. Not sure I can see that old street thug selling books.' Ron paused to think again. 'He was one of Shacklebolt's informants, I remember that. Said after the Dark Lord made him head of the DMLE he spent the first week partying and the next month wondering what potions the Dark Lord had been drinking. After a couple of meetings with Dolores Umbridge, he wanted out so badly he was willing to risk contacting the Order.'

'Right, sir.' McKenna said it so abrubtly that Ron realized he'd been reminiscing, and he clearly wasn't old enough to be doing that. Ron squared his shoulders a bit and tried to look focused. 'So what's Yaxley got himself into now?'

'Nothing,' said McKenna. 'He just lives up there. The problem is a little new age shop, sells aromatherapy and herbal remedies, homeopathic stuff. According to a local Watchwitch, it all works.'

'Lots of wizards or witches have little businesses like that. So long as they don't get noticed by the Muggle medical authorities, no one cares.' Ron sighed. 'Which means you're about to tell me something dramatic. Have I told you how much I hate drama? It's nothing but trouble.'

'Sorry sir,' but the smirk said she clearly wasn't sorry. 'Just this once?'

'Just tell me what you have, McKenna. Drama always means trouble for someone.'

The smirk fell as she pushed the folder across his desk. 'Yes, sir. You might say that the shop owner strongly resembles a person of interest. Someone from your War.'

Ron flipped open the file

paused

and closed it.

'Who else has seen this?'

* * *

'Merlin, Ron. It's him. It's really him.'

Ron knew that Harry was tying himself up into knots, working himself up to Do Something. It was a dangerous thing to do to yourself, and Ron was fighting the same impulse. Pushing yourself to run headlong into an unknown situation was the kind of thing that got Aurors killed. And even just unlocking a little shop with his family by his side, the man still looked alert enough to see trouble coming.

'Steady, Harry.' Ron poured himself the dregs of tea from the little pot, not looking directly at the family entering the new age shop just a few doors down. He and Harry were just two more people having breakfast outside the café, and they needed to keep on behaving as such. The man swept the street with one last gaze, even looking up at the tops of nearby buildings, and then followed his wife and child into the shop.

Was he always that alert, or had something spooked him? Had he spotted the two tense men trying not to look at him?

So what if he had?

Harry pretended to sip his tea. 'Jesus Ron, what are we going to do?'

'Nothing. We talked about this. It's barely within regulations for us to be here.' What he wanted to was rush in there and interrogate the man, demand answers. The problem with that... 'He hasn't broken any laws.'

'He's broken Muggle laws. That name he's living under had to come from somewhere.'

'Fine then. We'll call the police. And then what?'

Behind the broad face he'd borrowed, Harry's expression was almost desperate. 'Ron, I need to talk to him.'

Ron shook his head. 'No, you want to talk to him. So do I, mate. So does everyone, really. But we don't need to.'

'This is important.'

But it wasn't, and over the past three days Ron had been completely unable to make Harry see that. 'No it's not. It doesn't change a thing. The War's long over. He was the only loose end, and until a couple of days ago we hadn't even noticed that he was still alive. That's how _not_ important this is, Harry. Nearly twenty years, and we didn't notice.'

'You don't understand.'

'I understand that you sound like a whinging teenager.'

The old Potter temper flared up in Harry's eyes. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it quickly and glanced down the street towards the shop. 'You don't understand,' he said. There was no whinge to it now, just a man trying to explain. 'Out of all the people my parents went to school with, he's the only one who knew them and is still alive.'

'So you want to talk to him?'

'I want to talk to him.'

'I don't think you do,' said Ron. 'You think you do, because you think it's something you should want to do, but you don't really want to do it.'

Harry stared at Ron. 'You've been married to Hermione far too long.'

Ron ignored him. 'I think if you really wanted to talk to him, you'd have brought your kids.' Ron pushed on. 'Let's go. Shop's open, and we've twenty minutes left on this dose of Polyjuice. We'll wait around until it wears off, then have a nice chat after we scare the Hell out of his wife and kid. I bet he'll be thrilled to see us. He'll probably invite us up for tea.'

Harry didn't move. Finally his cheek twitched, as though he were flicking away a fly. He glared at Ron for a long moment. 'Git.'

'Arsehole. We going or what?'

'Yeah,' said Harry. 'We're going. Going back to the office.' Shaking his head, Harry settled back into his chair. He looked a bit lost, but Ron figured he'd get past it. 'We'll file a report saying it's just some homeschooled wizard earning a few pounds selling minor healing potions, nothing to worry about, you'll order McKenna to keep her mouth shut, and everyone will forget about it and it won't make any difference. You're right, it doesn't matter.'

'Matters to him,' said Ron. 'He looked happy.'

Harry was silent for a while. 'Good,' he said at last. 'My mum would have wanted him to be.'

* * *

Behind the shop windows he watched the two men leave their money on the table and go. Something about them had caught his attention, but he relaxed as he watched the pair go down Hallgate. They were obviously a couple, and bickering about something or other, and their bickering had been what had caught his attention.

Still, there was no need to be careless. He'd mention it tonight to Jim up at the pub, and keep his usual eye out. But for the time being he let himself relax.

Without a care for the past, important to no one but his family, Asher Corby went about his life.


End file.
